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Baseball playoffs: Buster Posey needs to break out with bat if San Francisco Giants to stay alive

MVP candidate Buster Posey, the cornerstone of the Giants’ offence, is slumping badly in the NLCS against the Cardinals.

Giants catcher Buster Posey is hitting .189 in 10 playoff games after posting a major league-best .336 batting average in the regular season.
(Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)

By Brendan KennedySports Reporter

Sat., Oct. 20, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO—After winning their fourth straight do-or-die game on the road Friday night in St. Louis, the San Francisco Giants are coming home with renewed energy in their uphill battle against the reigning World Series champs.

Carried by Barry Zito’s best performance as a Giant — while capitalizing on a costly error by St. Louis starter Lance Lynn — San Francisco’s 5-0 victory in Game 5 against the Cardinals has injected the already adrenalized club with another emotional boost as they continue to play best with their season on the brink.

The Giants’ MVP-candidate catcher, Buster Posey, is slumping. He has just three singles and three walks in the NLCS and is hitting .189 in 10 playoff games after posting a major league-best .336 batting average in the regular season.

In Posey’s defence, the Cardinals have made it clear in both their words and actions that they don’t intend to give him much in the way of hittable pitches.

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But he’s also swinging and missing more than usual. He has five strikeouts in 21 plate appearances in the NLCS, a 50 per cent jump on his season average.

“We can’t put all this on Buster,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said Friday. “That’s a lot to carry or a lot to ask of him when they’re really not giving him a lot to hit. It’s going to be up to all the lineup to do something to contribute.”

That’s true. Pence, who usually hits behind Posey, in particular needs to do more.

But the Giants, especially without Melky Cabrera — who was not reinstated by the Giants after serving his 50-game suspension for testing positive for elevated levels of testosterone — do not have an imposing offensive lineup. When Posey is scuffling, it looks especially thin.

And it’s a good bet that in Games 6 and 7, the Cardinals’ bats will not go as quietly as they did in Game 5, so the Giants will need Posey to hit like himself if they are to stay alive in this series — just as he did in Cincinnati.

Posey’s grand slam in the deciding Game 5 of the divisional series against the Reds gave the Giants a commanding 4-0 lead, which proved the difference in their unlikely comeback from a 2-0 series deficit.

Said Bochy: “I’d hate to think of where we would be without him.”

The four-run homer also solidified the baby-faced 25-year-old’s role as the unlikely leader of the colourful and charismatic Giants.

As a rookie in 2010, Posey was a key part of San Francisco’s World Series win in his first season in the big leagues.

He was lost for almost all of 2011 after suffering a season-ending injury in a collision at home plate. The Giants didn’t tank in his absence, but they failed to make the playoffs and did not get a chance to defend their first World Series title in 56 years.

“We saw what life was without him last year,” Bochy said.

Posey returned this year to become the first Giant to win a batting title since Barry Bonds in 2004. He was recently named the NL’s comeback player of the year and MVP honours may be next.

“I don’t know a player that’s made a bigger impact on a club than what he has on our club,” Bochy said.

But Posey’s got other things on his mind right now, and first should be finding a way to get his bat back on track.

If Giants pitchers are as stifling as Zito was on Friday night, maybe San Francisco will still be able to pull out a comeback while Posey struggles. The way things have gone so far with the Giants this post-season, nothing should surprise.

“Everyone counted us out four or five times this year already,” said Ryan Vogelsong, the Giants’ Game 6 starter. “First, when (closer Brian) Wilson went down, people said we couldn’t do it. Then we lost Melky, unfortunately — people said we couldn’t do it. The Dodgers made the big trade, people said we weren’t going to do it. We go down two to Cincinnati, they said we’re not going to do it. I think it’s the perseverance through the whole season is where we draw the confidence that it’s not over until the last out is made.”

Without Posey swinging like he did in the regular season, chances are that last out will come sooner than the Giants would like.

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